When I left Rochester yesterday morning (got up at 3:45am to return the rental car at the airport) I was very tired. The airport was pretty abandoned except for one massive line at the airtran check-in counter...they only had one person working even though they had several flights leaving at 6am. Eventually a few more employees showed up and one of them split the line into four different lines to make it go faster...but when people got to the front of their respective lines they were yelled at for getting out of line and told to go to the back of the original long one...it made no sense. So I somehow eventually got to the front of one and was checked in and then told I would need to pay $65 to check my cello under the plane. I say, "But I didn't have to pay anything on the way down here." She informed me that I did actually have to pay the $65 on the way down (even though I didn't) and that I should consider myself lucky because airtran only charges $65 and all the other airlines charge $100 or more. Does she think that I've never flown with a cello before? Other airlines rarely ever charge me anything and if they do, its $25 or less. Sigh...
All in all, I'm actually really happy that I had this experience. Yes, I was a walking zombie for a few days...but that was easy enough to fix after sleeping for 12 hours (last night). Technically this wasn't my first professional audition (since I auditioned for RPO once as an undergrad) but it really was the first time I had actually really practiced the rep and gone into an audition really knowing what I was doing and feeling pretty confident about my playing. I may not have advanced, but I know that I could have played well enough to and I just need to take more auditions to figure out how to let myself play better under that (very specific) kind of pressure. And after this craziness I know that it can't get much worse than what I had to go through (well, maybe it can) and I can only look forward to better audition experiences in the future. I hope?
At least I can look forward to never flying airtran again.
I just received a letter today from Airtran. I think they are trying to get rid of all of us angry passengers by giving us a little something for our trouble...they are still gonna here from me (I actually just sent my official complaint). Here's what they said,
